Journal for Eighteenth-century Studies, May 5, 2023
Benjamin Martin was an itinerant lecturer, instrument maker, and the author of a substantial numb... more Benjamin Martin was an itinerant lecturer, instrument maker, and the author of a substantial number of textbooks mainly in the sciences. His biggest project, however, was The General Magazine of Arts and Sciences (1755–64), dedicated to the dissemination of knowledge to a broad audience. Rather than study Martin's works with regard to the history of science, this article examines his publications in terms of their highly self‐conscious engagement with form and format. While his textbooks are concerned with economic compression, his periodical General Magazine experiments with a special, unwieldy mode of seriality that brings to the fore the role of format as well as the precarious status of seriality for the purposes of knowledge dissemination.
The life of the composer Dmitri Shostakovich features in several contemporary anglophone bio-fict... more The life of the composer Dmitri Shostakovich features in several contemporary anglophone bio-fictions, both novels and film, raising the question of the larger implications of Shostakovich's life in art today. In my paper, I aim to address how such Shostakovich bio-fictions reinvent the composer's creative labour in the context of World War II, Stalinist and post-Stalinist politics. Shostakovich's life as artist and man appears torn between fear of persecution, social commitment, and the claim of individual, aesthetic autonomy tied to a controversial degree of political dissent. In Western eyes, the Soviet composer thus epitomizes the transnational figure of the twentieth-century artistcompromised, yet achieving an expression of his personal voice, creating an emphatically modern art that is bound to its times and yet ultimately eludes both the dictates of politics and mimesis.
The following chapters offer an overview of English literary history, which we have divided in se... more The following chapters offer an overview of English literary history, which we have divided in seven parts: the Middle Ages, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the eighteenth century, Romanticism, the Victorian Age, modernism, and postmodernism. As we have emphasised in the general introduction to Literary Studies, this division has become a standard in literary studies that helps us structure our knowledge of the past and present, but it is by no means absolute. The boundaries between the periods are permeable, and the chapters often comment on authors and works which continue earlier developments or anticipate later strands of literary history. For example, prominent authors of the early modern period like Edmund Spenser drew on medieval literature and deliberately employed an archaic language and a traditional genre to develop a specifically English form of writing. This endeavour also shows that English literature always has to be investigated with a view to its sources and branches outside the British Isles. For instance, in the early modern period, English literature was strongly influenced by Italian, French and Spanish texts; the legacy of ancient Greek and Roman authors persisted into the twentieth century, though it decreased in importance; and ever since the eighteenth century, English literature has been closely associated with American literature and the ‘new’ English literatures that began to thrive in England’s colonies. Accordingly, many of the prestigious Booker Prizes for the best novel of the year have been awarded to Indian, South-African, and Australian authors.
Gibt es den „postmodernen“ Roman? An Forschungsliteratur zur Moderne/Postmoderne fehlt es nicht;1... more Gibt es den „postmodernen“ Roman? An Forschungsliteratur zur Moderne/Postmoderne fehlt es nicht;1 das Dilemma ist jedoch, das lange Zeit keiner so recht wuste, wovon er sprach — von einer neuen Epoche, einer neuen historischen Phase der Moderne oder gar einer dialektischen Kehrseite der Moderne? Und: welcher Moderne? In den Worten Ihab Hassans: „I have not defined Modernism; I can define Postmodernism even less.“2 Angesichts der Uneinigkeit daruber, was postmodern sei, verlagerte sich die Diskussion um so schneller auf die Frage der Bewertung des Phanomens. Die philosophischen Beitrage zur Postmoderne haben zum grosen Teil ideologischen Bekenntnischarakter; die Kontroverse zwischen Jean-Francois Lyotard als Vertreter der Postmoderne auf der einen Seite und Jurgen Habermas als Verteidiger der Moderne auf der anderen deckt das Spektrum der Positionen exemplarisch ab.3 Die Literaturwissenschaft streitet eher um den Bezug zur Moderne, um Probleme der Kanonisierung.4 Dabei ist es meistens der zugrundeliegende unausgewiesene Begriff der Moderne, der Verwirrung stiftet.
Taking as its starting point eighteenth-century sympathy's inclination towards local and familiar... more Taking as its starting point eighteenth-century sympathy's inclination towards local and familiar social relations, this chapter explores how the discourse on sympathy engages with and is transformed by imagining scenes well beyond the domain of proximity. The discursive negotiation of sympathy by Scottish Enlightenment philosophy, by Adam Smith in particular, displays a complex dynamic of relying on proximity and intersubjective presence on the one hand and reaching out by an act of the imagination on the other, thus bringing in a movement of spatial expansion and global vision. Smith's version of 'concentric circles' (Forman-Barzilai) represents a potential global extension of his ethics as well as the limits of sympathy's affective bonding. Contemporary literary reader-response poetics (Lord Kames) coopts the Smithian concept of sympathetic imagination for fictional encounters with life beyond the reader's own sphere: the sympathetic imagination serves to approximate vicarious experience. Rather than bring the world closer to home by such acts of the imagination, however, the popular literary writings on sympathy by Samuel Jackson Pratt are shown to thrive on sympathy's geographical outward expansion, ultimately reinventing the operations of sympathy in terms of a pre-Enlightenment cosmological harmony with clear overtones of imperialism.
Ever since the seminal works of Hugh Kenner (1962), Ruby Cohn (1964), and other Beckett critics o... more Ever since the seminal works of Hugh Kenner (1962), Ruby Cohn (1964), and other Beckett critics of the first generation, we have known about the richness in philosophical topics of Beckett's works and the manifold philosophical readings his texts purportedly lend themselves to. Among those, Beckett's association with existentialist thought has been perhaps the most persistent of all (see Esslin 1965, 4-10). In any case, Beckett criticism has tended to mirror the various twists, turns and crises of literary and philosophical theories of the past decades, responding to texts which "problematize the most basic concepts on which literary studies have been grounded and render them inoperative" (Fitch 1992, 126). It comes as no surprise, then, that ten years ago at the conference marking his 80th birthday, a "new Beckett" appeared once again, "thinkable only in the most recent terms" (Butler 1990, X). Beckett was discovered as a "poet of the poststructuralist age", as a "deconstructionist avant la lettre" (Butler 1990, X). Since then, his writings have been reread in the light of theories claiming textuality to supersede the subject,1 and a number of studies specifically on Beckett and Jacques Derrida's deconstruction have been published over the last years.2 Since Derrida has actually acknowledged his close affinity to Beckett's writings, nebulously finding him too close to write about (Derrida 1992, 60-62), this association seems to have somewhat ironically been granted authorization from the highest level. In short, linking Beckett to Deconstruction or Poststructuralism is not new. Well into the 1990s, moreover, Deconstruction seems on the wane, and as Steven Connor has suggested, its critical value to Beckett studies may legitimately be questioned. With its ever recurrent "denunciation of presence and logocentricity" (Connor 1992, 121), deconstruction has indeed tended to reproduce the same critical yield in spite of its proclaimed focus on the non-stability of textual meaning. Yet independent of the possible long-term critical sterility of Deconstruction, the affinity remains. It is between Beckett's insistence on the impossibility of a "true self, in particular as formulated in his trilogy Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable (Beckett 1979), and Derrida's critique of the notion of self-presence of the subject (e.g., Derrida 1973; 1976). This affinity, however, needs revision. I suggest exploring it in both ways, for not only does Beckett's trilogy anticipate Derrida's
Women and Contemporary Arctic Narrative 5 "Die unberechenbaren Naturkräfte, die uns in vorindivid... more Women and Contemporary Arctic Narrative 5 "Die unberechenbaren Naturkräfte, die uns in vorindividueller Zeit noch gefährlich wurden, haben wir inzwischen weitgehend gezähmt. Wir können ihnen nur noch in den Polarregionen, in der Wüste und ähnlichen Reservaten begegnen, die für die 'erzählten Extremlagen' des Abenteuerromans eine geeignete Kulisse abgeben."-For a list of relevant titles (with a German bias) cf. Kastura (2000, 29-31).
Journal for Eighteenth-century Studies, May 5, 2023
Benjamin Martin was an itinerant lecturer, instrument maker, and the author of a substantial numb... more Benjamin Martin was an itinerant lecturer, instrument maker, and the author of a substantial number of textbooks mainly in the sciences. His biggest project, however, was The General Magazine of Arts and Sciences (1755–64), dedicated to the dissemination of knowledge to a broad audience. Rather than study Martin's works with regard to the history of science, this article examines his publications in terms of their highly self‐conscious engagement with form and format. While his textbooks are concerned with economic compression, his periodical General Magazine experiments with a special, unwieldy mode of seriality that brings to the fore the role of format as well as the precarious status of seriality for the purposes of knowledge dissemination.
The life of the composer Dmitri Shostakovich features in several contemporary anglophone bio-fict... more The life of the composer Dmitri Shostakovich features in several contemporary anglophone bio-fictions, both novels and film, raising the question of the larger implications of Shostakovich's life in art today. In my paper, I aim to address how such Shostakovich bio-fictions reinvent the composer's creative labour in the context of World War II, Stalinist and post-Stalinist politics. Shostakovich's life as artist and man appears torn between fear of persecution, social commitment, and the claim of individual, aesthetic autonomy tied to a controversial degree of political dissent. In Western eyes, the Soviet composer thus epitomizes the transnational figure of the twentieth-century artistcompromised, yet achieving an expression of his personal voice, creating an emphatically modern art that is bound to its times and yet ultimately eludes both the dictates of politics and mimesis.
The following chapters offer an overview of English literary history, which we have divided in se... more The following chapters offer an overview of English literary history, which we have divided in seven parts: the Middle Ages, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the eighteenth century, Romanticism, the Victorian Age, modernism, and postmodernism. As we have emphasised in the general introduction to Literary Studies, this division has become a standard in literary studies that helps us structure our knowledge of the past and present, but it is by no means absolute. The boundaries between the periods are permeable, and the chapters often comment on authors and works which continue earlier developments or anticipate later strands of literary history. For example, prominent authors of the early modern period like Edmund Spenser drew on medieval literature and deliberately employed an archaic language and a traditional genre to develop a specifically English form of writing. This endeavour also shows that English literature always has to be investigated with a view to its sources and branches outside the British Isles. For instance, in the early modern period, English literature was strongly influenced by Italian, French and Spanish texts; the legacy of ancient Greek and Roman authors persisted into the twentieth century, though it decreased in importance; and ever since the eighteenth century, English literature has been closely associated with American literature and the ‘new’ English literatures that began to thrive in England’s colonies. Accordingly, many of the prestigious Booker Prizes for the best novel of the year have been awarded to Indian, South-African, and Australian authors.
Gibt es den „postmodernen“ Roman? An Forschungsliteratur zur Moderne/Postmoderne fehlt es nicht;1... more Gibt es den „postmodernen“ Roman? An Forschungsliteratur zur Moderne/Postmoderne fehlt es nicht;1 das Dilemma ist jedoch, das lange Zeit keiner so recht wuste, wovon er sprach — von einer neuen Epoche, einer neuen historischen Phase der Moderne oder gar einer dialektischen Kehrseite der Moderne? Und: welcher Moderne? In den Worten Ihab Hassans: „I have not defined Modernism; I can define Postmodernism even less.“2 Angesichts der Uneinigkeit daruber, was postmodern sei, verlagerte sich die Diskussion um so schneller auf die Frage der Bewertung des Phanomens. Die philosophischen Beitrage zur Postmoderne haben zum grosen Teil ideologischen Bekenntnischarakter; die Kontroverse zwischen Jean-Francois Lyotard als Vertreter der Postmoderne auf der einen Seite und Jurgen Habermas als Verteidiger der Moderne auf der anderen deckt das Spektrum der Positionen exemplarisch ab.3 Die Literaturwissenschaft streitet eher um den Bezug zur Moderne, um Probleme der Kanonisierung.4 Dabei ist es meistens der zugrundeliegende unausgewiesene Begriff der Moderne, der Verwirrung stiftet.
Taking as its starting point eighteenth-century sympathy's inclination towards local and familiar... more Taking as its starting point eighteenth-century sympathy's inclination towards local and familiar social relations, this chapter explores how the discourse on sympathy engages with and is transformed by imagining scenes well beyond the domain of proximity. The discursive negotiation of sympathy by Scottish Enlightenment philosophy, by Adam Smith in particular, displays a complex dynamic of relying on proximity and intersubjective presence on the one hand and reaching out by an act of the imagination on the other, thus bringing in a movement of spatial expansion and global vision. Smith's version of 'concentric circles' (Forman-Barzilai) represents a potential global extension of his ethics as well as the limits of sympathy's affective bonding. Contemporary literary reader-response poetics (Lord Kames) coopts the Smithian concept of sympathetic imagination for fictional encounters with life beyond the reader's own sphere: the sympathetic imagination serves to approximate vicarious experience. Rather than bring the world closer to home by such acts of the imagination, however, the popular literary writings on sympathy by Samuel Jackson Pratt are shown to thrive on sympathy's geographical outward expansion, ultimately reinventing the operations of sympathy in terms of a pre-Enlightenment cosmological harmony with clear overtones of imperialism.
Ever since the seminal works of Hugh Kenner (1962), Ruby Cohn (1964), and other Beckett critics o... more Ever since the seminal works of Hugh Kenner (1962), Ruby Cohn (1964), and other Beckett critics of the first generation, we have known about the richness in philosophical topics of Beckett's works and the manifold philosophical readings his texts purportedly lend themselves to. Among those, Beckett's association with existentialist thought has been perhaps the most persistent of all (see Esslin 1965, 4-10). In any case, Beckett criticism has tended to mirror the various twists, turns and crises of literary and philosophical theories of the past decades, responding to texts which "problematize the most basic concepts on which literary studies have been grounded and render them inoperative" (Fitch 1992, 126). It comes as no surprise, then, that ten years ago at the conference marking his 80th birthday, a "new Beckett" appeared once again, "thinkable only in the most recent terms" (Butler 1990, X). Beckett was discovered as a "poet of the poststructuralist age", as a "deconstructionist avant la lettre" (Butler 1990, X). Since then, his writings have been reread in the light of theories claiming textuality to supersede the subject,1 and a number of studies specifically on Beckett and Jacques Derrida's deconstruction have been published over the last years.2 Since Derrida has actually acknowledged his close affinity to Beckett's writings, nebulously finding him too close to write about (Derrida 1992, 60-62), this association seems to have somewhat ironically been granted authorization from the highest level. In short, linking Beckett to Deconstruction or Poststructuralism is not new. Well into the 1990s, moreover, Deconstruction seems on the wane, and as Steven Connor has suggested, its critical value to Beckett studies may legitimately be questioned. With its ever recurrent "denunciation of presence and logocentricity" (Connor 1992, 121), deconstruction has indeed tended to reproduce the same critical yield in spite of its proclaimed focus on the non-stability of textual meaning. Yet independent of the possible long-term critical sterility of Deconstruction, the affinity remains. It is between Beckett's insistence on the impossibility of a "true self, in particular as formulated in his trilogy Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable (Beckett 1979), and Derrida's critique of the notion of self-presence of the subject (e.g., Derrida 1973; 1976). This affinity, however, needs revision. I suggest exploring it in both ways, for not only does Beckett's trilogy anticipate Derrida's
Women and Contemporary Arctic Narrative 5 "Die unberechenbaren Naturkräfte, die uns in vorindivid... more Women and Contemporary Arctic Narrative 5 "Die unberechenbaren Naturkräfte, die uns in vorindividueller Zeit noch gefährlich wurden, haben wir inzwischen weitgehend gezähmt. Wir können ihnen nur noch in den Polarregionen, in der Wüste und ähnlichen Reservaten begegnen, die für die 'erzählten Extremlagen' des Abenteuerromans eine geeignete Kulisse abgeben."-For a list of relevant titles (with a German bias) cf. Kastura (2000, 29-31).
Uploads
Papers by Helga Schwalm